By Safrah Mat Salleh
76 Montfort Centre trainees graduate
KOTA KINABALU: A total of 76 trainees graduated at the 18th Montfort Youth Training Centre (MYTC) graduation ceremony yesterday.
The event was held at MYTC residential campus in Kinarut and witnessed by proud parents, teachers, instructors and officers together with the Brothers of St Gabriel, board of governors, management, heads of relevant government departments, donors, benefactors and friends of Montfort.
Each one of the graduated trainees received Montfort certificate after successfully completing their two-year programme in character formation and their respective technical skill development.
Eighteen of them are from Motor Mechanic Department, 21 from Welding Department, 16 from Carpentry Department and 21 from Refrigeration & Air-conditioning (domestic) Department.
Officiating the ceremony was Datuk Henry Goh, a local philanthropist and deputy chairman of Montfort Charity Golf 2018.
Established 19 years ago in Sabah, Montfort had helped many needy youth who had prematurely dropped out from the mainstream education system, to overcome their disadvantaged backgrounds by providing technical skill training and character formation.
Through the residential care programme in Montfort, the trainees are formed in discipline and leadership.
At the end of the trainees’ first year, potential leaders are selected and undergo leadership camp before they are eventually appointed to the Prefectorial Board, which is the hallmark of Montfort Residential Care Programme in empowering the trainees to be the leaders among themselves.
Montfort strongly emphasises on the importance of English proficiency and the trainees are being challenged every day to communicate in English, which had effectively proven in helping the youth to pick up the language, as many of them only had limited English education before they entered Montfort.
This year, Montfort has 74 senior and 28 junior trainees who sat for the Sijil Kemahiran Malaysia (SKM) examination which all of them managed to achieve 100% passes with nine of them achieving Terampil Cemerlang (Excellent Score) considering that most of them did not complete their formal secondary education.
Nineteen of the graduated welders had also managed to pass the 3G certification from The Welding Institute, which is a recognized certificate in oil and gas and engineering fabrication industries.
Furthermore, majority of the graduates had managed to secure employment with established companies based in Labuan, Peninsular Malaysia and around Sabah under Montfort Job Placement Scheme while a few of them had expressed their intentions to look for the jobs themselves or pursuing further studies in other institutions.
In June this year, Montfort will welcome another batch of 91 new trainees to take up the two-year skill training programme out of 150 applications.
Montfort also manages two rural hostels to cater for another 100 school-going Youth in San Damiano Boys’ Hostel, Kiulu and St Mary’s Youth Hostel, Sandakan.
The objective of the hostels is to provide a safe and conducive learning environment to enable the youth to complete their secondary education.